In today's academia, the price of school books is not inconsequential. Typically, students purchase the books and then use highlighters to indicate the subject matter of the book which is important to their course of study. Unfortunately, this method for highlighting the important subject matter is problematic because it permanently scars or defaces the book and prevents the book from readily being resold to subsequent students for reuse. Hence, there exists a need for allowing a student to easily mark a book without permanently scaring the book to allow the student to resell the book as though it was nearly new.
The need to avoid permanently defacing a document is not limited to academia, but also is applicable to the home and office because highlighters are commonly used to permanently mark items or documents. The permanent marking of documents is sometimes avoided by the use of applicators that place a removable label on the document itself. Furthermore, in office applications, a correction or cover tape may be used to cover up indicia placed on the exterior of a container so as to allow that container to be reused for storage of other documents or on documents that need to be redacted prior to copying.
An applicator that dispenses tape to serve as a highlighting function, yet to be removably applied to a surface so as not to destroy the printed page, is described in U.S. Pat. 5,076,883 of Bosley. The dispenser of Bosley has a tubular shape which may have some drawbacks with regard to its maneuverability, especially when compared with the shape of a contoured instrument, such as an easily grippable and maneuverable writing instrument having a contoured shape. The difficulty of manipulating a tubular device may be particularly experienced by children, older users or individuals with a handicap that impairs their motor control skills. In addition, to its disadvantage with regard to its manipulation, the dispenser of Bosley leaves its tape exposed to the environment. Such exposure may allow contaminates to find their way onto the adhesive tape and, thereby, hinder the adhesion of the tape to the surface of interest.
The prior art indicated by the aforementioned reference describing an applicator seems to suffer from the drawbacks of not providing a closed environment when its tape is not being used so as to prevent any contaminates from finding their way thereon and also for not providing a contoured shape that is more amenable to that desired for a writing instrument so that the applicator may be easily manipulated by all of its users, even those suffering from motor skills deficiencies.
There is also a problem for dispensing any adhesive-backed material in a one handed operation. Generally, the user must pull the adhesive-backed material from the end of the holder in order to start the application of the material. This can introduce dirt or debris onto the adhesive surface, as well as get adhesive on the user's fingers. Refilling and starting a roll of new adhesive-backed material is also problematic in this respect requiring handling of the adhesive surface in many instances. Additionally, once the adhesive-backed material is applied, a portion of the material remaining on the holder/dispenser remains exposed, and can pick-up dust or debris.